Christians Must Challenge False Rhetoric about the Migrant Caravan

President Donald Trump has engaged in false rhetoric about the migrant caravan making its way through Mexico, appealing to the narratives many Americans hold about foreigners and migrants. Christians must appeal to a counter-narrative of welcoming and hospitality that better accounts for the facts.

Over the past several days, President Donald Trump and conservative
media have focused Americans’ attention on a migrant caravan making its way
from Central America across Mexico toward the US border. The caravan consists
mostly of men, women, and children from Honduras who are fleeing violence in
that country. It began with around 7,000 members, but has since dwindled down
to about 4,000 as some participants have decided to return home or sought
asylum in Mexico.

Despite the arrival of a similar, albeit smaller, caravan
in April and May of this year without incident, President Trump has claimed the
caravan represents a national emergency, calling it an “invasion” or “assault”
on the United States. Both Trump and conservative commentators have suggested
that the caravan is made up of criminals and “unknown
Middle Easterners,” and that its members are rife
with disease. Despite the fact that the caravan is still in southern
Mexico, weeks away from the US border, Trump has called up active duty military
in increasing numbers to assist at the border: first 800 troops, then earlier
this week just over 5,000, and on Wednesday Trump called for 15,000
troops, although there is no indication he has translated this threat into
a formal request to the Department of Defense.

Although the Trump administration had no control over the
timing of the caravan, it seems clear that Trump and his conservative
supporters are hyping the caravan in an attempt to stir
up the Republican base for the midterm elections next Tuesday. This raises
the troubling possibility that Trump is deploying active duty troops based on
political considerations rather than in response to real national security
threats. Likewise, it is certainly disturbing that the president is willing to marshal
the security apparatus of the state in response to an exaggerated, in some
aspects fabricated, threat, and that many Americans are willing to go along
with it.

All of this — inflating a bedraggled group of peripatetic refugees weeks from our border into a disease-ridden terrorist “invasion,” an urgent, imminent “national emergency” — amounts to a kind of willed delusion.It represents a collective agreement on the right to believe a narrative spun almost entirely out of whole cloth, draped over a reality to which it bears little resemblance.

Roberts worries that delusions about the caravan are symptomatic
of an “epistemic crisis” in American democracy, in which a significant number
of Americans inhabit a “hermetically sealed ecosystem of knowledge, news, and
information in which nonsense and conspiracy theories flourish.” He fears that,
without a shared set of agreed-upon facts, it is impossible to engage in the
reasoned debate necessary for democratic governance. He adds, however, that the
frenzy over the caravan represents something new: while previously conspiracy
theorists and provocateurs were limited to media echo chambers, they now sit in
the White House and have control over all the assets of the government,
including the military.

Roberts rightly points to the history of conspiracy-mongering
on the right (e.g., Benghazi, Jade Helm, birtherism, etc.) to help explain the
exaggerated fears about the caravan. But this fear-mongering also draws on
deep-seated beliefs about foreigners and immigrants that crop up repeatedly
throughout American history: the association of foreigners and immigrants with
criminality; the association of immigrants with disease, and even the
description of immigrants themselves as a kind of infestation; the portrayal of
immigrants as an “invasion.” As I wrote
here last year, our understanding of public policy issues is shaped by a set
of narratives or frames we use to make sense of the world around us; some of
these narratives or frames give us a more or less accurate picture of the world,
but others can be wildly misleading. Conspiracies or hyped claims like those
surrounding the caravan make specific factual claims about events in the world
that can in theory be falsified, but draw on underlying narratives or frames
that are more fundamental and that are more difficult to falsify. It is precisely
because conspiracy theories are often rooted in these more fundamental narratives
or frames, however, that people are willing to believe in them even in the face
of contradictory evidence.

As I noted in that same post, false narratives or frames
make it particularly difficult to dislodge false beliefs about the world
because those beliefs are closely linked to a network of other beliefs (some
true, some false). We have a tendency to correct false beliefs in the way that
is least disruptive to the whole network of beliefs we hold, which at times
poses an obstacle to gaining factual knowledge about reality.

How, then, can Christians who oppose Trump’s rhetoric about
the caravan provide a more truthful narrative? It remains important to challenge
factual inaccuracies and absurdities, such as exaggerated accounts of the size
of the group or unrealistic depictions of what might happen when the caravan
reaches the border. But it is also important to avoid making inaccurate or too
sweeping statements in response. For example, although it is certainly wrong to
stereotype members of the caravan as criminals, it is also likely to be the
case that some members have criminal records. When opponents make statements that
are too sweeping in response to Trump’s false claims, counterfactuals can then
reinforce people’s belief in the false claims.

More importantly, Christians must be able to provide more
accurate narratives about the reality of the caravan and the American response
to migrants and asylum seekers. Christians must be able to patiently explain the
violent situations faced by individuals in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador
(and the US role in contributing to that violence) that motivate them to make
the arduous journey to the US, whether in small groups or as part of a caravan.
They must also give an account of how the process of applying for asylum at the
border works, and the obstacles placed in the way of asylum seekers, such as
overcrowded facilities at ports of entry and criminal gangs that prey on
migrants waiting on the Mexican side of the border. Even here, though, it is
important to avoid false impressions; in an attempt to challenge the notion that
the caravan poses a security threat of some kind, some have exaggerated the
number of women and children in the group, downplaying the number of men in the
caravan.

It is also helpful to provide alternative narratives. For
example, today Bloomberg
reported that on Wednesday, Peru accepted 6,708 refugees fleeing the
economic and political in Venezuela. In total, Peru has received about 550,000
Venezuelans in just over a year. Although the circumstances are certainly
different, it is notable that a country much smaller than the US and less economically
endowed has successfully received, without much fuss, a number of Venezuelans
that dwarfs the number of asylum seekers and refugees admitted to the US each
year. As Bloomberg points out, Peru has issued work permits to thousands of the
Venezuelan migrants. The example of Peru shows that any perceived crisis caused
by the arrival of migrants from Central America is a crisis of our own
creation, caused by our own misperceptions of who the migrants are and by border
policies not designed to address the realities of contemporary migration to the
US. The US is perfectly capable of taking in Central American men, women, and
children fleeing violence in their home countries while detaining or refusing
entry to those with criminal backgrounds. We simply choose not to do so, as so
many in the public are misled by xenophobic mental framing and ignorance of the
realities of the migration process. Christians must work toward providing an
alternative framing, one of welcome and hospitality, as well as realism.

Matthew A. Shadle is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. He has published Interrupting Capitalism: Catholic Social Thought and the Economy (Oxford, 2018) and The Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective (Georgetown, 2011).